The Crop Research Institute (CRI) of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) is suggesting a pilot project for industry to buy into research products. Institutes under the CSIR have developed new technologies and introduced improved crop varieties with high economic benefits for the manufacturing and agricultural sectors. But the researchers are unhappy at the rate of adaptation and application by farmers and industries, even though they are implementing a policy of client-driven research. Director of the CRI, Dr. Hans Adu-Dapaah, in an interview with Luv FM, said government has a critical role to play in bridging the gap between research and industry. He said the linkages between researchers, agriculturists and industrialists must be activated for the country to benefit from research products. “We in the research institutes are supposed to come out with solutions to problems and these are products; and these products are supposed to be taken over by industry. There is the need for something like a piloting [project] and that is where you prove to industry that it is worth it. But that linkage is not there. “Industry is supposed to put in a little bit of money for us to be able to prove to them that the thing works but they also have their problems. So that is where government would have to bridge the gap; bring industry and then provide some subsidy for them to be convinced that the thing works”, Dr. Adu-Dapaah suggested, adding that “once a businessman knows that if I put in money, I’m going to get value for money, they’ll be prepared to do that”. According to him, research products will not get to farmers and other targeted beneficiaries unless the cost of technology transfer and information dissemination is borne under a private-public sector arrangement. Story by Kofi Adu Domfeh/Luv FM/Ghana